How about Ground Zero? She’s too young to remember 9/11 but the as-yet-unrebuilt site is still history in the making (presumably it will be different when she visits again as an adult). Across the street is St Paul’s chapel, where George Washington worshipped after his first inauguration and which somehow survived the attack.
Also Downtown then is Trinity Church, The Battery and the ferry to Ellis Island.
Bumping to find out what newcrasher and newercrasher wound up doing!
We just got back from our jaunt. Train up to NY early Saturday morning, then we dropped our stuff at our hotel (thanks, Priceline - got a room at the Millenium Broadway on 44th) then visited the big Toys R Us store (just a few doors down) and then the M&Ms store… then the subway up to the Museum of Natural History.
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Moon Unit** had wanted to see Wicked. I couldn’t get tix for Wicked for that evening; the matinee the next afternoon would have put things too close to our train departure time so we got tickets for the matinee of Mamma Mia (it started an hour earlier so less risk of missing the train).
I asked her if she wanted to see what show we might get Saturday evening tickets for, from the TKTS booth, hoping she’d want to go for Avenue Q (or the slight chance of Wicked), but she didn’t - she wanted to go to Little Italy for dinner then the Empire State Building.
So we did both, including the “sky ride” at the ESB which involves sitting in a movable “car” that tilts and shakes as you watch a large-screen projection of a helicopter tour. That was kind of fun. Then the elevator to the top (or nearly so) - you have to transfer for the last 6 floors. The second elevator had a long 20-minute wait but we could opt to walk up the floors; I sent Moon Unit to do that while I waited for the elevator (bad knees). There was a thick cloud cover coming to just below the top of the ESB so we couldn’t see any of Manhattan, but we saw New Jersey (no clouds in the west).
We had hoped to see the Tim Burton exhibit at MOMA but you have to buy timed tickets and they were completely sold out. We could have joined MOMA for a donation of 75 bucks then that gets you into the exhibits any time, but that sounded pretty steep so we didn’t bother. We visited Madame Tussaud’s instead, which Moon Unit really enjoyed. Then we walked up to the Winter Garden, picked up our tix, and wandered a bit before heading into the show.
Which was fun, if not the most compelling story. They did a good job of making ABBA’s music fit into the story. **Moon Unit **and I were among many mother-daughter pairs.
The show let out early enough that we were able to try to go to the Nintendo store at Rockefeller Plaza, unfortunately that was completely closed for Easter. So we grabbed dinner at a place called Pret a Manger and then walked down part of the Diamond District’s street (but all the stores were closed, and nothing pretty even in the windows). So we went back to the hotel, collected our backpacks, and headed down to Penn Station for the return train.
Glad you enjoyed it, Mama Zappa. I had the same prob trying to see the Tim Burton exhibit when I tried to go a while back–very popular, eh?
Wow a lot of great ideas. I have nothing to add; however I have one to take way… I wouldn’t go to the top of the Empire State Building with a 10 year old. You have to wait in line FOREVER.
Check out this pic… http://www.planetware.com/i/photo/new-york-empire-state-building-new-york-city-ny297.jpg
Now imagine that there are people every possible space on that floor. There’s a reason you see all those roped off paths; it’s because you’ll wait in line for HOURS to get to the top.
I’ll ammend this to say; if you’re going to go; get there when they open. I’m GUESSING you have a better chance at not waiting all fricking day to get to the top.
If your daughter is into making things, try the craft museum.